


you, etched into the stars of my heart

by everylosttouch



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Magnus is in love with space and the night sky, a sprinkle of angst, alec is Magnus’ night, almost 2.5k of rambling, but also immortal malec, how many references and metaphors can i make about night until y’all are sick of it, it’ll make sense i promise, mortal malec, poetic shit, so many references to night and stars, there’s exactly 0.2 lines of implied character death here so there’s that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22442590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everylosttouch/pseuds/everylosttouch
Summary: In which Magnus falls in love with Alec and the stars that surround him
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 14
Kudos: 100





	you, etched into the stars of my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Lmao what’s up bitches it’s me, ya boi
> 
> EXCEPT  
I created something that isn’t horrendously angsty for once _and_ it’s canon compliant (who tf am i)  
I was in a real sappy mood and wanted to write something that’s out of the norm of what i usually do, so here it is  
Honestly it’s almost 3k of metaphors about stars and space but i love it regardless
> 
> (also a lovely thank you to my wonderful wife, @alistoney who beta’d for me)
> 
> Hope y’all enjoy!!  
-A

Magnus has always been enamored with the night sky.

Since the days of his youth, of growing up in Jakarta, his eyes have drawn up to the vast expanse of darkness above him. There was always something about it, something specific about the alignment of stars, the patterns and colors, that was so alluring. He can recall clearly the nights where he could never sleep, and would sneak out of his childhood home just to gaze up at the stars. Out there on the outskirts of town, there were never any lights to distract from the stars above. Out there, the night sky was a canvas of opportunity waiting to be explored. 

And oh, how he wished to explore it. How he wished to be whisked away by the stars and be held by the sky. 

He had always believed the stars had been calling to him, in some way, shape, or form.

Many people thought him to be crazy. Camille surely thought so. At first he had fallen so hard and so fast for her, for a woman who embodied the night. But she wasn’t brilliant like the stars. She didn’t leave him dazzled, amazed, in awe of the vast beauty she had the potential to be. Instead, she was hot, scorching like the sun, beating down on him as his body begged for release. She was not the night sky, she was the sun. 

The sun, in its full 5778 Kelvin. She burned him.

He wears those scars now, etched onto the fabric of his heart.

And while Magnus carries those burns, he still looks to the night sky, hearing its silent siren call in his heart. His chest aches, wondering if maybe someday there will be a day where he will embrace the night sky like he’s dreamed of for so many centuries.

&&&

It’s midnight when they first meet. 

He’s unable to see outside the windows, too focused on the war raging within his home. There’s magic flickering against the walls, screams and yelps of pain in the distance. He watches as an arrow shoots past him, colliding with the flesh of the man in front of him. 

The moment it calms, he turns. 

And perhaps it’s then that his heart surges. He isn’t sure why, maybe just the fact that this man before him just looks so amazing, so beautiful and stunning. His expression is dark and moody, but there’s a flicker of spirit in his eyes. It’s bright, twinkling, and—

_ And holy shit _ , Magnus thinks. _ This man is my night. _

“I’m Magnus,” he starts, praying that his voice is steady. “I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

The man’s stony gaze all but crumbles away, half smile tugging at his lips. His face splits into something kinder. 

“Alec.”

_ Alec _, Magnus repeats in his head. He repeats it a few more times, rolling the name through his brain and tasting it on his tongue. His heart surges at the sight of Alec’s smile, and it lights up his whole body. It feels like a supernova, a burst of energy and light rupturing his chest. He feels breathless in that moment.

Absolutely breathless.

&&&

It’s an absolute storm in the following weeks. 

Magnus can hardly keep up with everything. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome is alluring and infuriating, so rooted deep in tradition he doesn’t know how to live for himself. So Magnus pushes. His pushing only lands him heartbroken, abandoned by the only man who has given him the semblance of night. 

It’s only on the night when his desire stands on a stage to wed a woman he could never possibly love, that he acts.

And it’s in that action, that the night he had dreamt of for centuries, finally embraces him.

It’s everything he’s dreamed of. It’s bigger than a supernova, a galactic explosion of cataclysmic proportions. Alec kisses hotly, with breathless pants and slightly chapped lips. He kisses like Magnus is the damn world, like he’s water in a desert and he hasn’t had a drink in days. It’s desperate but also perfect, and Magnus can’t get enough of it.

When they part, there are stars in Alec’s eyes.

And Magnus can’t help but get lost in them.

&&&

It’s still messy afterwards, trying to figure out how they fit together. Magnus isn’t like Alec. They’re very different people. Magnus is immortal. Alec is not. It’s difficult and unknown, and Magnus has to learn how to navigate through space, through asteroids and minefields of old trauma and prejudice, through patches of self-deprecating black holes, and explosions of overheated stars. It’s through those explorations that he finds things he can’t help but marvel in. He falls in love with the lights of Alec’s eyes, of the constellations of scars mapped in Alec’s skin from battles with demons and training sessions that got a little too rough. There’s an inevitable gravity in Alec’s form, one that Magnus is incapable of fighting.

Not like he puts up much of a fight.

On their second date, they travel through a portal from New York to a world far away, where they can free themselves from the chaos back home. The city lights are nowhere to be seen, and the only sounds are the distant crash of waves against the shore. The moon is a slivered crescent, but bright enough that Magnus can see the sharp angles of Alec’s face. It’s striking, the dim blue against pale skin. Magnus can’t peel his eyes away. 

Alec’s eyes aren’t on him. No, instead, they are trained upwards towards the sky with a kind of awe-struck, childhood wonder sparkling against his golden eyes. It’s like a mirror, Magnus thinks, Alec staring up at the night sky when he himself is just as awe-inspiring and beautiful.

“I always enjoyed the night,” Alec confesses. “Normally in the city, it’s impossible to see this many stars. But as a kid, I remember sneaking out of my room in Idris just to look up at the sky and gaze at the stars.”

Magnus can’t help but snort. “You? Sneak out?” he asks incredulously. “I thought you liked to play by the rules.”

Alec lets a clumsy smile loose. “I was rebellious in secret,” he admits. “And besides, I never broke the rules for anything serious or for anything that put anyone in immediate danger. Unlike my siblings, as you probably know already.”

“Oh yes,” Magnus agrees on a laugh. He flushes when he notices Alec’s eyes have drifted away from the sky, focused solely on him. “W-What?”

“You’re beautiful.”

Magnus’ breath catches. It’s a plain statement, delivered with such brutal honesty it almost hurts. Magnus has never been called beautiful in his long, long life. There’s so much about him that’s ugly, that’s too much. He can’t possibly be—

“You’re beautiful, Magnus,” Alec repeats, as if Magnus hadn’t heard him before. A warm hand caresses Magnus’ jaw, and Magnus leans into the heat. “You’re beautiful and you amaze me. I grew up in Idris, where people were so rooted in prejudice and spite, and it was all so ugly and horrible. I’d look up at the night sky and think to myself how something so beautiful and amazing could exist in a world like that. In those stars, I wished for someone who would be just as beautiful and amazing as the night sky, and—” he cuts himself off, licking his lips before starting again. “And then I met you. And now, now I see you, and though I wonder how someone so amazing could exist, I know that somewhere deep down in my heart my wish had been granted, that I had found someone so awe-inspiring that the whole world couldn’t compare.” 

His golden eyes sparkle, illuminated by the moon and the sea and the stars.

“You are my night sky, Magnus Bane. And I…I think I’m falling for you harder than I ever have in my life.”

The confession is shattering, and Magnus can barely hold himself together at the seams. Everything in his body is telling him to move forward, to reach out and touch. It’s Alec’s unexplainable gravity that pulls him forward, crashing his lips to his lovers like the waves of the sea against the sand. There are fireworks and explosions in his chest as he surges forward. His breath is hot, and his eyes burn. It’s like being robbed of all the oxygen in his body all at once, but it’s hardly a crisis.

Alec kisses him back with fervor, with hot pants and traveling hands until their backs are covered in sand and the need for air forces them apart. Magnus looms over Alec, watching as the galaxies behind his eyelids glimmer with an endless torrent of emotions.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Magnus beats him to it.

“We were looking at the same sky,” Magnus starts, voice slightly gravelly as he speaks between breaths. “All my life, I had looked up to the sky and being so completely overtaken by its beauty. It has been my dream to embrace the stars, to explore the sky and watch stars implode and galaxies form. I hoped that one day, one day I’d be able to embrace all that, to hold it in my hands and never let it go.” His hands drift to Alec’s face, palms pressing against cheeks slightly scathed by stubble. “And then I met you. So suddenly, I found my night sky, and now…I’m never letting you go.”

There seems to be another explosion happening behind Alec’s eyelids. His eyes widen almost comically before he’s pulling Magnus back down to him, crushing his lips against Magnus’. They drift then, crashing into each other with shuddered gasps and clumsy touches until all they know is each other. 

They don’t seem to notice how long they’ve been away until the high tide crashes against their feet. 

With a breathy chuckle, they rise from the now-damp sand. The night sky has started to recede as the dawn peeks over the horizon, leaving the midnight sky in nothing but a memory.

_ I don’t need the sky anymore _ , Magnus thinks to himself. _ My collection of stars is right here. _

&&&

The night isn’t forever. Magnus knows that.

Alec won’t be either. He knows that too. Alec is mortal. He is not.

But it doesn’t become clear until the moment Alec lies on the floor of an alley, with the demonic possession of his parabatai looming over him, piercing his heart with the archer’s own arrow, how mortal his lover really is.

He almost loses him that night, almost watches the stars in his lover’s eyes grow dim. 

It haunts him for days, and he spends many sleepless nights at Alec’s bedside, hoping and praying that he will wake up soon.

“Magnus?”

It’s groggy and fractured, but Magnus nearly cries hearing Alec’s voice again. 

“I’m here,” he breathes out, looming over his boyfriend. His eyes roam over his face, over the dips and curves of his lips, of his brows, of the crease of his eyes, and—

“I’m sorry.”

Magnus shakes his head. “For what?” 

“I almost died. I almost left you alone.”

He shushes him, shaking his head. “You’re here now, Alexander. That’s all that matters.”

A storm rages behind Alec’s conflicted gaze. “…but one day I won’t be.”

“Alec—”

“I’m mortal, Magnus. I’m going to die someday. I’m your night sky but one day—” his breath shudders painfully. “One day the sun is going to rise and I’ll be gone.”

Magnus wants to cry at the thought. He knows Alec is mortal. He fell in love with him knowing that. But just because he is mortal does not mean that his feelings are finite. Their infinite. In every year that passes, he will continue to love Alec with everything he has.

There is no one like him.

There will never be anyone like him.

“Yes. One day…one day you’ll return to the sky. But that day isn’t today,” he says gently, gaze falling to their joined hands. “I don’t want to live in fear of the one day I’ll be forced to live without you. I want to experience every day I can with you. Every day you are alive is a day to celebrate.” He looks back up to Alec. “You are my night sky, Alexander. And though the sun may rise, the night will come back eventually.” He gives a hopeful smile. “After all, we always find our way back to each other, don’t we?”

There’s a breathless huff from Alec, and tears that built up against his eyelids slip down his cheeks. Magnus is quick to wipe them away, bringing him close and kissing him slowly. Alec kisses him back just as gently, savoring and tasting and reveling in the fact that they are here together now, and will have many years together. 

Through whispered _ I love you’s _, gentle touches, and soundless tears, they fall together. They bask once more in their shared feelings of intimacy. For now, neither of them are going anywhere. No one is leaving.

After all, the night is long, and Magnus will bask in the night for as long as he can.

&&&

It’s the night that also takes him, his lover, years later. Alec’s soul returns to the sky, as his body holds to the mortal coil of the world below. And though Magnus cries, he knows that Alec’s love is an infinite thing. No matter how the skies in his life may change, there will always be stars. Those same stars will watch over him through centuries, and he will never be alone.

And so, a year after his love returns to the sky, he casts his gaze upward, into the vast, aching chasm of the cosmos above. In those bright spaces, he sees them, the twinkling memories that ring heavy in his heart. His eyes trail across the stars, mapping a familiar shape that he knows all too well. There, written into the stars, is the man he called his lover. Long legs and a sturdy torso built from years of battle take up miles of the dark sky. A bow, long and curved, points upward, trained to the heavens. 

_ There you are _ , he whispers gently. _ I’ve missed you, my love. _

And perhaps it’s just his imagination, but he swears the stars flicker in response.

He’s there, Magnus knows. His lover lives on, in the embodiment of galaxies and supernovas, etched into the sky so that Magnus may look upon him every night for centuries to come. It’s funny almost, that his mortal lover has now been immortalized amongst the stars. 

It’s that thought that brings a smile to his face. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me over on twitter @the_biconic_mb


End file.
